Old Concrete Powers Upgrade: UDOT recycles 15,000 cubic yards on site; cuts truck trips

What if an old highway could become part of the new one? In Utah, that is exactly what happened. The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) recycled around 15,000 cubic yards of concrete from the old Bangerter Highway in 2024, crushing it on site and reusing it as road base for new highway interchanges. The amount of concrete was roughly equivalent to the volume of two Goodyear Blimps, according to UDOT. Rather than sending the decades-old pavement away as construction waste, crews processed it where it was removed, reducing the number of truck journeys needed to transport the material.A 30-year-old highway gets a second lifeThe concrete came from sections of Bangerter Highway that had been in place for about three decades. As part of a major upgrade, crews needed to remove portions of the old roadway to make way for new freeway-style interchanges. Instead of treating the demolished pavement as waste, UDOT turned it into raw material for the replacement infrastructure.The recycling process took place over roughly five months. Heavy equipment first broke the existing concrete into manageable pieces. The material was then fed into a large crushing machine, where it was reduced to s...